Human nature

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Originally posted by Dreamer128:
Is there such a thing as human nature? Normally I would say, no. That every human being is different. But when I look at the history of our kind. I wonder. Through out human history, one thing has always remained the same. The strong abuse the weak. When we sailed out and discovered new cultures, what did we too? We crushed them, or we enslaved them if they werent suitable for anything else.
Have we learned nothing in the millenia's we have spend on this world? For nothing has changed. The poor country's still get oppresed by the rich ones. But instead of really helping them, we blind ourselves with our so-called charity's. Does anyone care how many miles of tropical rainforest had to be cut for that nice table? Does anyone care that those fancy shoes were made by childeren? Our goverments claim to be helping the third world country's, but all I see is that we get richer. And they get poorer. Multinationals move to the country's with the least laws, so they can abuse the enviroment and the workers.
Goverments claim to help the third world to restore their economy, but yet they force those country's to accept agreements that benifit us, not them. The US provides weapons to criminal regimes (such as the Taliban) who continue to kill thousands of inocents. Is that civilation?
Please tell me I am wrong here, for I am almost ashamed to be human.

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Dreamer, your premise is false. You are not talking about HUMAN nature here at all, you are talking about ALL nature. It is a well known principle that has been knon since man first began to reason..this principal is callled..............

SURVIVAL OF THE FITEST.

In nature the weak die so that only the most successful design survives, in this case weak does not mean physically weak, intelligence can offset physical weakness. Personally I like the idea of survival of the fittest and the process of natural selection. A species does not always help itself by allowing the "weak" (and I mean by weak a design that is not optimal) to survive long enough to reproduce. If a society can engineer the survival of faulty or defective genetic sequences then those faults will gradually make their way into mainstream society..thus degrading the whole...Im NOT NOT NOT saying we should embark on a campaign of Eugenics here ...just making a statement of scientific principal.

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Originally posted by Rikard_OHF:



Personnally I think the fact we have "to make money" is sickening
Call me a communist
And maybe i am
But what a beautiful word it would be if we needed no money
Where would work not to gain more
but because it will support humanity
Where all are working
And all get equil resources
But because of Human nature
because we always want more then the other
Because we firts and foremost care for our selfs
This is not possible
I'm realistic enough to know that
But it's a damn shame

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The world you describe would not be inhabited by Humans Rikard. We as a species do not work that way. Even in a moneyless society you would have huge numbers of freeloaders who contributed nothing while consumeing the resources provided by others, Communism do NOT work for human beings....maybe for some other beast.

[Ryanamur]

I'll resume your entire post on these 2 sentences and I'll comment on the whole issue using only these 2 sentences.

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Originally posted by Dreamer128:
Through out human history, one thing has always remained the same. The strong abuse the weak.

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Relax, this is not human nature. That's just animal instincs.

Human nature, per say, really doesn't exist. It only a lack of moral value that one individual (sometimes many) has. It's nothing more than portraying an excuse for lack of responsibility. So in essence, "human nature" doesn't exist. It's like darkness. Darkness doesn't exist. Darness is cause by the absence of light.

[ 01-18-2002: Message edited by: Ryanamur ]

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Originally posted by Thoran:
I've been giving this some thought lately... it's a tough thing to accept, the things that humans do to other humans and the world around us.

Human Nature - I think the use of the word "Nature" is important here. If you look at Nature it won't take long for you to realize is a harsh mistress. In "Nature", only the strong survive. In "Nature", if you're a creature that needs 2 quarts of water a day and you live in a desert... you will die. In "Nature", if you're blind, deaf, crippled... you're dead, it's the way nature insures that only the best genes of any species propegate. In "Nature", you're goal is to create progeny, as many and as strong as possible. He who's seed takes over the world... wins.

"Nature" is WAR, it's violent, senseless, arbitrary, cruel.

It's in our attempts to rise above this that we become Human. At the same time that we help our fellow man and strive to be compassionate, we can NEVER escape that we are a part of Nature and ultimately bound by it's rules. Our psyche is intimately tied to the base drives that Nature demands we have to succeed. We NEED to have something to work for, we NEED to see our labor accomplish something in order to feel fulfilled. The weakness of socialism is that they tried to deny this simple and unavoidable reality. If a high performing individual is given the same life as a low performing individual... you eventually reduce the entire civilization to a "least common denominator" state where no one is motivated to achieve... because it gains them NOTHING that "Nature" (and thus those base drives we all live with) values.

I would LOVE to be able to say that humanity has evolved to the point where the motivation for "group" success within a person is stronger than the motivation for "self" success... but we aren't there yet, and given the time required for even basic changes in physiology I'd guess it will be thousands of years before that might happen... and even then it will ONLY happen if there's a clear "Natural" advantage to doing so.

We can kid ourselves with the notion that we live in an enlightened world... but in the end "Nature Rules". All we can strive for is to UNDERSTAND the things that really motivate and try to exert a positive influence over the more self centered drives.

Maybe that sounds a bit pessimestic... in reality I'm an optimist about human prospects. I see slow change, and if we can hold it together long enough we may get there. Keep in mind that Humanity has only been the "Master of all it surveyed" for a bit over a century. Before that we were struggling for survival against nature... the true hope IMO is that we change from struggle against nature to the "Guardians of Nature". Some already are there in this world, most are not. But I have faith.

[ 01-16-2002: Message edited by: Thoran ]

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Thoran you are 100% correct, it totally astounds me at the hnumbers of "Eco-Warriors" who are completely ignorant of these basic facts of life.

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Originally posted by jabidas:
Im going to very blunt about this. Man is still out in the jungle, its only the trees that have changed.

You can talk all you want about modern morality but the truth is that the strong beat down the weak for their own advantage.

You can call modern wars wars of liberation if you want, but the truth is that first world countries beat on lesser powers for economic advantage its that simple. Free trade is another bad joke, free trade is the west keeping its boot on the neck of everywhere else forcing their faces into the mud with crippling economic sanctions and limitations.

And lets be frank, If some presently weak country had global power today they would do the same thing.

I guess you could call man evil and say that his only goal is power, but what is good and evil, they're just words, opinions, the want for absolute control is just something all animals have, no matter what lies you cover it in.

What have we learned? how to keep the world down. Let me give you an image of the future, a heavy boot smashing into a face over and over and over forever.

Ideas like Love, justice, equality and truth are just cheap lies for any misfit and loser who couldn't face the world the way it is. They couldn't hack it so they have ideals to console themselves with. And that's why the world is the way it is, people are weak. If they could stand on their feet and not revert to some distant impossible self deception and actually pay attention to way things are the world would change.

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On the other hand you just might be a little cynical here....Love and Justice and other concepts of society do exist, and are used WHEN it doesnt conflict with the basic ideal of survival.

[Thoran]

I think Jabidas' post mirrors the way a LOT of people think about the world. If you're on the receiving end of the "strong and the weak" thing of course you're going to be cynical. I would venture to guess that even if you're on top of the pile you could very well see your existance as nothing but base exploitation of those around you... or at least a hollow existance with no real challenge left in it.

As a human being I think I would classify myself as "True Nutral" in many ways, I believe there needs to be a balance of forces in the world. I see the existance of strong and weak as a necessary rule of nature, and instead of seeing that as a negative thing, I see it as an affirmation that "all is right with the world". Maybe it has to do with my engineering mind, but I see everything natrual as continuous functions following (more or less) the good ole bell curve. Absolute Good and Absolute Evil are extremes of the curve, and hopefully most humans are in the middle somewhere. The danger is if we get too far to one side OR THE OTHER. When that happens a correcting force WILL be applied. The width of the bell curve COULD be defined as the extents of "Free Will", if there were no Mother Teresa's and Hitlers... there would be NO free will.

The more things like "Political Correctness" attempt to force us into conformity with standards of behavior, the more they attempt to control and limit our Free Will... which is why they must be destroyed. (as a movement of course [img]smile.gif[/img] )

I realize this is a cold and calculated way of looking at the world, I believe it's fairly accurate. That also doesn't change the fact than when evil impacts me personally I will react exactly the same as any other person would. While I understand that evil needs to exist, I don't want it in my personal life any more than anyone else would. (a bit of a dichotomy there but consistant with the gap between my "analytical" mind and "emotional" mind. And sometimes there's a HUGE gap there

[ 01-18-2002: Message edited by: Thoran ]

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Originally posted by Thoran:
I think Jabidas' post mirrors the way a LOT of people think about the world. If you're on the receiving end of the "strong and the weak" thing of course you're going to be cynical. I would venture to guess that even if you're on top of the pile you could very well see your existance as nothing but base exploitation of those around you... or at least a hollow existance with no real challenge left in it.

As a human being I think I would classify as "Absolute Nutral" in some ways, I believe there needs to be a balance of forces in the world. I see the existance of strong and weak as a necessary rule of nature. (I'll finish this when I get to work... sorry for the break)

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Yes the weak exist to be used by the strong as food or for fertilizer!

The key to life is to be not the weak and to be the strong (or the smart)

tongue is definatley firmly in cheek!

[pm]

i think killing inocents is jus't a part of human primal instinct.
that we didn't managed to control during our evolution to what we now are. so you could be ashamed butt hee you can't control evolution!!

[Barry the Sprout]

Ummm, lets redress the balance a bit here shall we. Here comes socialism...

I basically think, to answer the first question Dreamer, that there is no such thing as human nature. There is an animal instinct when pushed to do what we can for survival. This has been carried into todays world because we have made the mistake of building our moral system around it. The whole of the economic and social foundations of our lives are based on the idea that you have to worry about yourself and not other people. The object of life at present is to "win" the economic race. I don't think that has anything to do with some kind of innate driving force. We are greedy people simply because we have made ourselves greedy by gradually accepting that greed is the right thing to do.

All the people who said socialism doesn't account for human nature are wrong in my opinion as a socialist. Socialism basically states that human nature has been perverted to make us greedy, we weren't greedy first. So now I agree with everything you say Dreamer - the world is in a big mess (to simplify slightly) and we are convincing ourselves that this is the only possible way.

I think your view of the perfect world Rikard is very possible. We have got ourselves to the stage where our only reason for not adopting it is because we think it will never work. That is the primary defence of capitalism, and in my opinion it is no defence at all.

[Thoran]

Interesting... so you're saying that socialism believes that todays society is a perversion of human nature? I personally would find that a hard position to defend, it relies on conclusions that in my opinion are hard to draw.

Such as...

-Greed is a new phenomina... I guess I just can't believe that, greed is based on the desire for success which is driven by natural selection.
-Capitalism is a moral system... Capitalism is a social system, not a moral code.
-The moral system governing people in capitalistic society is bases on "animal" instincts. The social system that forms the basis of capitalistic society is "individual rights". The success of capitalism over socialism is due to the fact that "individual rights" more closely aligns with human base motivations than socialist "group" rights.
-"economic and social foundations of our lives are based on the idea that you have to worry about yourself and not other people" - infers that worrying about yourself is an impulse imposed by society. In reality "self-interest" is demanded by natural selection and thus reinforces the alignment of capitalism with humanity.

In my opinion none of the above statements are easily defended concepts, because they attempt to establish that the rules that govern all of nature don't apply to us. As I said earlier I would love to say that humans could overcome these base needs... but at this point in time I don't think it's possible.

Humanity is not ready for true Socialism.